


i have for the first time found what i can truly love

by avonleasangel



Series: I feel you close, although you're eight hours ahead [3]
Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Cutesy, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Shirbert, post 3.07, they should have kissed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 10:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21354712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avonleasangel/pseuds/avonleasangel
Summary: His grip on her hand tightened. “I am not planning to marry Winnifred. Most would think it improper to devise a wedding when the groom is in love with someone other than the bride.”post 3.07
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Series: I feel you close, although you're eight hours ahead [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495367
Comments: 7
Kudos: 328





	i have for the first time found what i can truly love

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this over a course of a few days so im hoping i didn't ramble too much. i included more dialogue than i usually do, which resulted in this being the longest piece that i have written on here so lmk how i did with that pls. 
> 
> all jane eyre quotes are not mine obviously, and are used word for word.
> 
> i kinda lost track of time while editing this and its currently 2:07 in the morning. oops. 
> 
> but per usual, i hope you guys like it and please leave feedback!!! it makes my day eons better and helps me improve as a writer. 
> 
> till nect time, love y'all;)

Anne found rainy days to be the most marvelous providers of scope for her imagination, the rain lulled her mind into an articulate focus that she often had a hard time maintaining under other circumstances. And it also helped that Delphine found the rainfall as soothing as she did and had been lulled into a blissful sleep hours ago, Anne finally had a peaceful silence to cultivate her story, one that she had been craving for days. 

_ Her brazen female protagonist had made the grandest of entrances at the town’s masquerade ball, capturing the attention of everyone in the room. The lavish navy blue dress that she adorned perfectly offset her raven hair, which casaded in effortless waves down her back. Per tradition, she was to wait at the top of the stairs until the next mysterious bachelor arrived; this observance had resulted in countless pairs, throughout the generations, falling into the deepest, most divine and unexpected love by the end of the night. _

_The dark-haired beauty ignored the expecting gazes that were cast on her while she _  
was forced to wait for her partner to arrive; she found this particular beloved practice to  
be horridly dogmatic. Why did she need an escort, and a stranger at that to accompany  
Her for the night? Despite her reservations, she couldn’t help the sigh of relief that fell  
past her lips when but sigh with relief when her partner materialized beside her. He boldly  
took her hand, breaking her from her reverie, and began their descent of the stairs 

_“Took you long enough.” She whispered through smiling teeth, making sure her  
indignation was evident in her tone. _

_“My sincerest apologies, miss. I—” _

_“I would prefer it if you didn’t make excuses, I’ve had enough of those to last me a  
lifetime.” It was then she met the enigmatic gaze of her partner and was left breathless as she took in the intensity of the warmth that swirled in his brown eyes, which seemed to express genuine regret. She felt her annoyance ebb away “Although, I suppose it would go against tradition if we didn’t dance.” _

_Maybe this night wouldn’t be as torturous as she thought made it out to be. _

_He let out a low chuckle but agreed nonetheless. “We can’t have that, now can we?” _

_Her skin prickled with excitement as they made their way out onto the dance floor, together, hand in hand. . .until an elegant, golden haired angel crossed in front of them. _

_“It seems I am also without a partner.” She spoke softly, a sanguine smile adorned her lips. It was clearly evident that she was fully aware of the power she wielded over men,, more specifically how it was slowly encapsulating the boy in front of her. _

_The redheaded girl felt impossibly foolish as her hand fell back to side while she watched her devastatingly mysterious and handsome partner take the dance floor with the angel on his arm. While it hurt, and the pain turned to embarrassment as she felt the gazes of the party’s onlookers on her and their pity was suffocating but she couldn’t help but acknowledge how well the two looked together. _

_“Excuse me, miss, would you care to dance?” She turned to see another man, presumably another bachelor in front of her, noticeably less enticing than her original partner but still good looking and seemed nice enough. _

_She nodded, and accepted his hand and made sure to keep her head high and her smile bright. His free hand settled on the small of her back while hers rested on his shoulder. _

_It was going to be better this way, she concluded, it had to be because she wasn’t going to let that darned raven haired boy, regardless of how gorgeous he was, know the effect that he had on her. _

_Upon hearing the angle comment on what sounded to be her new partner’s foreign experience, she found her attention being fixated on a certain couple behind them, she asked her partner what his thoughts were on the idea of a good adventure. _

An especially loud clap of thunder came out of nowhere, and Anne could have sworn the largest pair of cymbals had just been crashed over the Blythe homestead. Concern rose up within her as she watched the rain began to fall in a thick downpour, only seconds had passed before she wasn’t able to make out the tree in the front yard. 

Her chest grew tight with concern. Bash and Gilbert were still in the orchard, they had been all day, picking the last of its apples. 

“Relax, it’s only been a few minutes” She muttered, pacing the length of the kitchen anxiously. Tea. Yes, that would not only calm her nerves but it would be something warm that her friends could come back to.

She went about filling the kettle and gathering the tea leaves. The water had just begun to steam when the front door burst open, Sebastian, drenched, shivering stood in the door frame and visibly shaking with tremors from the cold. “Over a year of living on this island, and I still hate its blasted weather patterns.” 

“Bash, where’s Gilbert?” Anne was surprised she was able to talk at all, considering the way her chest had just tightened. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“He said he was going to tie up the last of the apples so the rain wouldn’t wash them away but he was deeper in the orchard than I was when it started. I ran back here and figured he was right behind me.”

Anne nodded, pushing down the worry that was attempted to surface in her chest and returned to her tea preparations. “Um, Delphine’s been asleep for most of the afternoon and I was just about to make tea. Would you like some? I was thinking green or perhaps chamomile---why are looking at me like that?” 

“You’re really going to leave Gilbert to his own vices out there? Blythe may be smart but his sense of direction is developing, he’ll be halfway to Green Gables before he realizes he’s going the wrong way.”

She snorted, something she only did when she was with Bash. “If he waits it out under one of the larger trees to wait it out, he’ll be fine.”

“So it’s supposed to be ironic or whatever you call it, that this new stubbornness of yours happen to coincide with Gilbert escorting Ms. Rose to the fair?” Bash mused as he unlaced his boots. 

“No and no, while I extol your comprehension of irony, your application of the concept needs improvement because there is no world where I care about who Gilbert Blythe chooses to associate himself with.” She exclaimed indignantly. There was no reason that anyone besides Diana needed to know about her slipup and how she had succumbed to a certain raven haired boy’s charms.

Bash chuckled and dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “I apologize for me assuming so, and I would go and fetch him myself but I can’t feel my toes at the moment. Though I suppose I could get him but then I would be risking my health as Dellie’s only biological family in this world, that seems a bit selfish don’t you?” 

Anne met the pure mirth swirled in his eyes with a determined, annoyance stare of her own. The two entered into an unannounced staring contest, the terms having already been set tacitly. 

After what like ages, the burning in her eyes became too great and she blinked. “Fine, I’ll go but if I catch a cold or hypothermia, you’ll be the one to explain it to Marilla.” 

Having left her own jacket at Green Gables, Anne begrudgingly shrugged on a spare, praying that it was Bash’s. The less germane Gilbert was to her right now, the better. 

“The umbrella is on the last hook!” Bash called from the kitchen. 

Anne drew in a deep breath, remembering the breathing techniques that Matthew had taught her to do when her temper spiked. 

She cursed Bash with each step that carried her farther away from the warmth of the house.  
Water had already begun to pool on the ground, sloshing over the toes of her boots, which were already soaked through. She could feel the water seep into her stockings. The precipitation had turned gravel path down to the orchard into a muddy mess. Anne grimaced as she dislodged her boot from the muck for the third time. 

In doing so, she promptly lost her balance and fell forward onto her knees Mud splattered onto her face and front of her dress when she made contact with the ground. The umbrella had fallen out of her when she fell and landed a few feet behind her. 

Anne reached for it, desperately needing its leverage to help her stand, but with her luck, which was proving to be worse and worse with each passing day, she had stretched too far. Landing on her back, she let a string of curses, which would have earned her a mouthful of soap if Marilla had heard them. 

She sat up and used the umbrella to help push herself into a standing position. After a few more steps, Anne soon realized that she needed the umbrella more to help dislodge her feet from the mud rather than using it to keep the rain off her. 

“Gilbert! Gilbert!” She yelled down every row of trees as she passed them. 

“Gilbert Blythe, I swear to God himself if you don’t yell back this instant, I’m going back inside and leaving you out here to shrivel up like a raisin!” Not her best insult, but given the circumstances she hoped it was enough to get this god forsaken boy out of the orchard. 

She guessed she was ten or so rows in when a hand reached out and took hold of her ankle. 

“Gilbert Blythe, I told you to yell back not grab my ankle and scare the living shit out of me!” 

Despite the cold, Anne’s cheeks flared red in mortification and Gilbert, who had been unscathed by the storm besides the few drops that had caught in his hair and eyelashes (which Anne despised herself for taking notice of his), had the nerve to laugh at her embarrassment. She glared at him, making sure that all her frustration and annoyance was obvious in her eyes.

“Get up, I’m not interested in catching hypothermia today.” She extended a hand for him to take. 

He wrapped his hand around hers and she pulled him up. Anne didn’t wait for him to say anything else before stepping out under the canopy of the apple tree and back into the rain. 

“Um, Anne?” 

“What?” 

“I was running back, trying to beat the rain and I rolled my ankle tripping over a root.”  
Anne dropped her gaze down to his left ankle which did in fact look swollen. “Take this,” she handed the umbrella to him, “It makes walking in the mud easier.” 

“No, I can’t---”

“Gil, you’re the one with a twisted ankle, not me. Take the umbrella before I rescind the offer.” 

With a tentative and thankful smile, Gilbert accepted the umbrella and hobbled out to where Anne was waiting. 

The pair had taken walks together before, conversation flowed freely. They had meandered through the woods, bouncing from topics regarding the latest novel that Anne had read and whatever Gilbert’s medical fascination was at the time. Now, their pace was slow and an excruciating silence surrounded them, a result of the unresolved, unspoken tension between them. 

“Put your arm around my shoulder,” Anne instructed when they reached the muck again, the contour of her body in the mud had already overflowed with water. She turned to him when he didn’t respond. His hand was nervously scratching his neck. “Relax, Gilbert, this isn’t a love confession, I have no intention of coming between you and Miss Rose. I fell twice myself, with two perfectly healthy ankles, you don’t stand a chance alone.”

Reluctantly, he obliged and looped his arm around her neck. Their fingers intertwined in the process, for stability Anne told herself. 

“Everything okay, Anne?” 

“Fine.” 

“L-I-A-R.” He mused playfully, glancing over quickly at the redhead. 

Anne purposefully loosened her grip on Gilbert’s hand, causing him to slip further into the mud. 

“Gilbert Blythe, I am fully C-A-P-A-B-L-E of dropping you in the mud right here, right now.”

The pair continued in silence until they safely made it to the porch, free from the merciless rain at last. Anne leaned against the outside while Gilbert went about uniting his boots and placing them next to the door. She carefully watched his gate as he walked inside, more specifically his left ankle, which appeared to be perfectly normal and seemed to be causing him no pain at all. 

She followed him inside and grabbed the dish towel that was the kitchen table. 

“Can I get you—why are you hitting me with a dish towel?” 

“I rolled my ankle,” Anne’s voice dropped several octaves to match the masculine tone of the boy that she was impersonating, “L-I-A-R!” She raised her arm again but before she could hit him again Gilbert reached a hand out and wrapped his fingers around Anne’s wrist. 

The rebuttal that she had prepared slipped from her tongue and all she could focus on the warmth of Gilbert’s hand on her arm. She recognized this feeling, the sparks that were coursing through her arm were the very ones she had felt when they had danced in the schoolhouse. 

Anne could have sworn that he felt them too. Her false assumption had led her to an edge of a very fearsome, very tempestuous cliff that she had promptly pushed off of by a very studious, sweet socialite of the name Winfred Rose. The fall had been excruciating and her newly raised hopes had left her just as fast as the breath in her lungs did. 

Her aspirations were soon replaced by an fervorous anger, not at Gilbert, but at herself. What was the extent of her lunacy ? Clearly, convincing herself that the handsomest and kindest boy in all of Avonlea had liked her to some capacity was a feat that she didn’t even know that she was able to achieve. 

The cultivation and publication of her article, and dealing with the unforeseen consequences of the town had kept her busy for the days following her heartbreak. She had come to terms with it, as best as one could in a day but then they had both escaped out to Miss Stacey’s porch and those feelings, the ones that had only recently turned her stomach into a convoluted mess. 

His eyes, his scrumptious golden brown eyes, were filled with a familiar intensity and for a moment, it was just the two of them. She had looked at his lips first, cursing herself for giving into her frivolous emotions but then he had returned the gesture and his gaze dropped to her own.

With her final ounce of restraint, she found Winfred's name slipping from her lips, reminding both of them why couldn’t do what they both were thinking and yearned to do. 

Anne had always prided herself on the fact that she was the very opposite of all the insults that had been thrown at her throughout her adolescence—-she wasn’t about to kiss a boy when he was in courtship with a girl, no, woman. 

She found the reminder was ringing in her ears now as loud as church bells, with only inches separating her and the boy who was the source of her hormonal temptations. 

“I-I was going to say, that, um, I could draw a bath, if you wanted, considering the rain probably won’t let up for another few hours.” His offer was of the most unromantical things that Anne had ever heard but it did nothing to diffuse the tension that had accumulated between them.

She cleared her throat and took a step back. “T-That be wonderful, thank you.” 

~*~

“Anne, do you help with anything?” Gilbert said tentatively from the other side of the kitchen door. 

Never, in a million years, would Anne have guessed that she would ever sit in the Blythe-LaCroix bath tub in the middle of their kitchen. 

She was surrounded by water that had long since turned opaque with dirt but with a very extenuating and problematic circumstance in her hands. Despite her best efforts in attempting to get the last of the dirt off her back, she was met with defeat.

So, yes. She did in fact need help, but she wasn’t about to ask for it. 

It wasn’t about the whole Gilbert seeing her partially naked thing but dirt wasn’t the only thing on her back thing.

After years of abuse, her back was littered with scars and burns from when the girls at the orphanage got tired of their mundane torture techniques. Mr. Hammond had left his mark on her in the form of long white scars were scattered across her back. Some large from when he used his thick, fancy black belt and the thinner ones came from when he had to settle for his worn out everyday brown belt. 

Anne tried not to look in the mirror whenever she was done bathing. Feeling her dress rub against the scars and actually looking at them were two completely different things. Nobody in Avonlea knew about them but her. Even in their deepest, most sacred conversations, Anne had never spoken of them to Diana.

She reached a hand back and traced her fingers over the scar that ran from the tip of her right ear and almost the whole length of her spine. The day that she had gotten it, Mr. Hammond had been more inebriated than usual and his aim lacking the precision that it usually had. One of his lashes had missed its mark and strayed wide. 

Gilbert, with his chivalrous virtues, burst into the kitchen with a hand over his closed eyes. “I didn’t mean to burst in, but you took awhile to response and I-I—-”

She drew her legs to her chest as tight as she could, she admitted reluctant defeat. “Gilbert, I need help with something.” 

“With what exactly, do you need help with?”

“T-there seems to be dirt on my back and I’ve been unsuccessful in my attempts to get it off. Could you wash it off?” 

“That would require me to open my eyes and I don’t want to intrude on your privacy.” 

“Gil, it’s fine,” Anne pressed her forehead against her knees and sighed, “I trust you.” 

She heard his breath catch in his throat, but he said nothing as he took the extra dish towel, dipped it in the water and slowly began to work the dirt from her back. He was gentle, his touch light as a feather, treating her skin as if it was her wounds were still open. 

His careful fingers found the scar that she had been tracing earlier. Anne bit the inside of her check as she felt him trace the length of it. She knew that her scars weren’t pretty, they couldn’t be. The wounds never had enough time to heal properly and even if the Hammonds had the resources to clean them, Anne would have never laid a hand on them.

In her circumstances, Anne knew she was lucky that she hadn’t contracted sepsis. 

Gilbert held his tongue as best he could, he was supposed to be washing her back, not snooping into her past but as he took in every scar and blemish on her freckled skin, his grip on the cloth tightened. He bit 

It was no secret that Anne Shirley-Cuthbert had lived an entirely different life before she came to Avonlea and these scars were testimony to that, but they also told a story of someone who had experienced more pain and suffering than anyone should have to endure in a single lifetime. Anne had emerged from the strife, passionate, brave and an inspiration to others; she had become everything that her tormentors had tried to beat out of her.

He had thought he knew her, but then she rallied the rest of the students and went up against the sexist and misogynist board of Avonlea, mystifying the townspeople as she marched confidently past them towards Town Hall. Gilbert realized then, he didn’t know her, at least not as well as he wanted to. Her determination to shed light and educate people on the injustice that Josie had experienced had far deeper than she claimed them to be, he knew that much but he wanted to know more. 

“Finished.” With a final brush of his cloth, the last of the dirt washed away and all the constellations of her back were on full display. His fingers were itching to connect them but he knew he probably shouldn’t cross a boundary that he was already teetering on the edge of. “There’s a sweater, a pair of my old trousers, socks and a set of Mary’s undergarments on the table.”

Anne nodded silently and Gilbert took that as his cue to leave. 

Thankfully Mary’s undergarments fit, they were the only ones in the pile of clothes that Gilbert had left that did. She rolled the sleeves of the sweater thrice and they still hung past her finger tips. The pants were ill fitting as well so she tucked them into the socks to avoid tripping.

He was sitting in the armchair, brows creased in concentration as his eyes skimmed over the words of what Anne assumed was a medical journal. 

“Reading about the latest medical advancements?” She asked, from her place in the doorway. 

“For once, no. I was actually reading a book that I believe you’re very well acquainted with.” 

Although they had officially acknowledged and terminated their rivalry days prior, Anne felt a familiar tug in her mind, one that wanted to test him on the wondrous novel that was Jane Eyre. 

“To talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.” She recited nonchalantly, hoping he would catch on to the game she was hinting at starting. 

It took several moments, but she watched a small grin pull the corners of his lips what when he realized what she was doing. He kept the book in his hand while he began to cross the room in long, slow strides. His response was just as casual.“The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of the narrator.”

Anne found her response springing from her tongue quicker than she thought possible. “I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit.” 

Her chin lifted up in confidence when his response wasn’t immediate. There was no feasible way that he could know the novel’s contents better than she did. 

This would be a swift and easy victory.

“I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you.” Gilbert hadn’t even been looking in her general direction during both of his responses and her heart was beating erratically within her chest. His demeanor remaining perfunctory while his words were implying something else entirely. 

It was then when brown met blue and the pair’s eyes found each other, both searching for any signs of honesty behind their recapitulations. 

“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs.” 

Her response was all Gilbert needed to hear before he cut the distance between them, the few that had separated them was now mere inches with their close proximity. He reached out and took her hand in his. 

“Is this you or Jane talking?” He whispered. 

What was she doing? Reciting amorous literature with a another woman’s beau-to-be. An overwhelming fear blossomed in Anne’s chest. 

“It does good to no woman to be flattered by a man who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it.” She had hoped that her oration would have quelled the curiosity in his eyes but it only grew as his brows drew together in quandary. “Gilbert, it does neither of us any good to partake in this foolishness when you have plans to wed another.”

His grip on her hand tightened. “I am not planning to marry Winifred. Most would think it improper to devise a wedding when the groom is in love with someone other than the bride.”

It was Anne’s turn to be confused. She frantically searched Gilbert’s eyes for any indication that he might be lying but she was met with nothing but raw honesty.

Her uncertainty was briefly entertained because before she could comprehend what was happening, Gilbert’s lips were on hers. Lacking any experience all things romantical, Anne wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but instinct kicked in when she found eyes fluttering shut and her hands slip out of Gilbert’s and rest themselves upon his shoulders, pulling him inconceivably closer. 

She couldn’t help the sigh of content that fell from her lips as Gilbert wrapped his arms around the small of her back. Their lips met again and again, each time more ardently than the last. It seemed like Gilbert was just as synchronized with her now as he was in school, when her head tilted right, his went left, When her fingers daringly toyed with the curls at the nape of his neck, he responded by placing a gallant kiss on her jaw. 

Anne now understood why so many authors dedicated pages and whole books to the euphoria that was coursing through her veins and why it was so highly sought after. She do anything to make this feeling last, to kiss this boy for as long as she could. 

“Atta boy, Blythe!” Bash coursed from the stairs, effectively causing the teenagers to halt in their actions. 

Gilbert shot a glare toward the older man. 

“My apologies, I’ve clearly interrupted something, so I’ll just have Dellie take her bottle upstairs.”  
Gilbert slowly dropped his arms from Anne’s waist and the redhead couldn’t help but sigh in protest. She took a hold of his arm and placed it where it had only been moments before, and received no complaints for doing so. 

“Gilbert?”

“Hmm?” He had gone about twisting a piece of her hair around his finger. 

His hair more disheveled than usual and slightly swollen lips, Anne felt content knowing that she had been the one to do this to him, perhaps the first one to have done such things to him. “Would you consider it indecorous for a girl to initiate a kiss?” 

The raven haired boy attempted to feign solemnity, but he smirked nonetheless. “I mean, I would never tell you what to do.” 

“Because if a girl wants to kiss a boy, then she should be able to, right?” She continued, softly outlining a vein on his arm with her finger. 

“I would agree, yes.” 

With a smile, Anne pulled him down into another kiss, which Gilbert happily reciprocated.

**Author's Note:**

> please comment with anything i did good/bad/kinda good with, the whole 2am thing kinda screwed w my editing abilities.


End file.
